Slow image acquisition with uEye camera when using labview drivers

[JED1986]

Dear All,

I was wondering if I could get some advice about some software I am trying to write using a Labview and a USB uEye camera (UI-1540-M).

I am having great difficulty in getting the camera to record videos at the specified frame rate using the labview drivers available from IDS imaging (the manufactures of the camera).

Using IDS's own software I can capture and record videos comfortably at 25 - 30 frames per second using my laptop and the for mentioned camera.

However, my application requires me to time lock the videos agaisnt sounds which I am playing through the same laptop (i wont go into the details for the reasons why, suffice to say I need record time locked videos so I know exactly when sounds were played during that video).

When I do this with labview I get an erratic slow recording rate which is less than half the frame rate which I load onto the camera.

I guess my questions are, is there an architecture which I should use to capture and record videos using the uEye camera and drivers and why is there a discrepancy between the IDS's software and labviews and what can I do to resolve it (or if anyone has had the same problems?) 

I have attached photos of my various attempt below, non of which have been successful:

 

I know the camera is capable of real time recording at 25-30 fps and my computer is able to write to file at this speed as the IDS software is able to do it.  It just seems when I use the labviews drivers I dont get the same functionality.

I am using a native windows codec so it does support jpeg compression (which I am using)

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Joe

[MoviJOHN]

Your latency could be due to many things, but looking at your wiring diagram, I see that you are using at least three (3) timed loops.  What kind of processor are you running this on?  These timed loop structures are not usually advantageous on non-RT equipment.

The LabVIEW toolkit from IDS is general enough to work with many cameras from their line.  As such, in some cases there are slight misalignments between the features offered to one model versus another.  The best way to eliminate the possibility that the slow response is due to the toolkit is to try the most basic acquisition example from IDS.  If you can get fast framrates, look to your own code for the problem.

[JamesKent]

Hi Joe,

As pointed out the usage of timed loops are generally only useful in a Real-Time context, and the slow erratic frame rates you are discussing look like they may be related to performance, so it would be advantageous to know the specifications of the system that you are acquiring on. Have you tried creating a very stripped down application which just grabs images from the camera, so we can verify that you are able to run it at the nominal framerate in LabVIEW? If not, could you please try doing that.

Best Regards,

James Kent

[JED1986]

Hi Both,

Thank you for suggestions, I tried one the samples which come with the IDS drivers and it seemed to work better, though still not as well as the IDS custom uEye demo.

I think you might be right about the process power, I am going to try it on a desktop computer I have got in the lab and let you kow how it goes.

Thank you both for your help,

Kind Regards,

Joe